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THE ACADEMY: 

Demands for it, and the Conditions of its Success. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE ASSOCIATE ALUMNI OE 

BARRE ACADEMY, AT THEIR REUNION, BARRE, 

VERMONT, JUNE, 1877, IN CELEBRATION OF. 

25th anniversary OF THE PRINCIPAL'S 

CONNECTION WITH THE INSTITUTION. 



CALVIN B. HULBERT, D.D., 

PkESIDENT of MiDBI-KBUiiY COLLEGE. 



BOSTON, MASS. : 
NEW -ENGLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

16 H A W li E r S T 12 E E T . 

1878. 




rja« U B \ r-. £ < 

Rnnk -H R 



THE ACADEMY: 

Demands for it, and the Conditions of its Success. 



AN ADDRESS 



r '^0 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE ASSOCIATE ALUMNI OF 

BARRE ACADEMY, AT THEIR REUNION, BARRE, 

VERMONT, JUNE, 1877, IN CELEBRATION OF 

25th anniversary OF THE PRINCIPAL'S 

CONNECTION WITH THE INSTITUTION. 



BY 

REV. CALVIN D. HULBERT, D. D., 

Presidext of Middlebuby College. 

. i 



BOSTON, MASS. : 

NEW -ENGLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY. 

No. 16 Hawley Street. 

1878. 



's'vanster 



'92b 



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CORRESPONDENCE. 



Barre, Vt., June 12, 1877. 
Eev. C. B. Hulbert, D.D., 

Dear Sir : — Having listened to your address before the Associated Alumni 
on " The Academy : its Demand and Needs," we respectfully request a 
copy for publication. 

J. H. JACKSON", F. E. WOODRUFF, 
C. L. CURRIER, E. E. FRENCH, 
L. TENNEY, G. L. STOW. 



MiDDLEBURY COLLEGE, June 14, 1877. 
Gentlemen, — Dear Sirs : — 

Your request for the publication of the address which I had the 
honor to give at the late reunion of Alumni, is received. It was 
written in the interest of Barre Academy, and to further the enter- 
prise proposed in the very terms of the invitation that convened us ; 
and if, in your opinion, its publication will do anything to secure the 
end for which it was delivered, you are welcome to it. The theme 
discussed is one of intrinsic interest to every citizen of the State. If any 
account me as having passed the bounds of fitness in an excess of personal 
reference and commendation, I find an ample defence in the Silver-Wedding 
character of the occasion, which justified a degree of freedom which other- 
wise might have appeared unseemly. It is no feeble support to the 
estimate wliich is pronounced in the address upon the services of your 
distinguished principal, that Dr. Worthington Smith, lately President of -the 
University of Vermont, spoke in terms of equivalent commendation in an 
address delivered before you in 1852, at the instance of Dr. Spaulding's 
entrance upon his labors here, and which may be found, in part, in your 
first catalogue. 

Yours very respectfully, 

C. B. HULBERT. 
To J. H. Jackson, M.D., 
C. L. Currier, Esq., 
Rev. L. Tenney, etc. 



ADDRESS. 



Our Honored Teacher, Dr. Spaulding ; his Associates on the Board of 

Instruction ; Gentlemen Trustees of Barre Academy ; Fellow Alumni ; 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

This is a goodly occasion, and full of the spirit of a noble friendship. 
The North has given up, and the South has kept not back ; many of us 
have come from afar, and some, possibly, from the ends of the earth. 
As we hail from all sections of the country, so we come representing 
almost every vocation in life, and from various posts of service, and with 
no little disparity in our ages. We come associated as Alumni, the 
sons and daughters of a common parentage ; we come to exult together 
in a reunion, and within the bounds of the ancestral acres, in the old 
family mansion, around the old hearth-stone, and with the old folks at 
home. We come to extend to one another the friendly greeting ; to 
look one another again in the face ; to recall the good old times, and the 
incidents, and the struggles, and the joys of our school-days ; to renew 
our allegiance to the institution we honor ; and then to gird up our loins 
with strength and resume again the journey of life. It is befitting that 
we thus rest awhile from our burdens, and enjoy these festive scenes. 
The remembrance of dear ones departed, — companions of our youth, 
once our associates in study, — will be enough to moderate our transports 
and give to the occasion a moral worth. 

It gives me pleasure to extend to you all, as the occasion enjoins, the 
cordial greetings of the hour. I express your hope, as well as my own, 
when I say that nothing shall here transpire that shall not strengthen 
our friendships, deepen our interest in this institution, and call forth 
more warmly than ever our regard and affection toward our venerated 
and honored instructor. I am sure that we do no violence to poetic 
license, when we give to this reunion of Alumni the title of a Silver 
Wedding. It is true that we require the term to slip its common 
meaning ; for, as you are all aware, many more than twenty-five years 
have elapsed since our beloved teacher was accompanied at the bridal 
altar by the noble woman who shares the honors of his success, and still 
lives to greet us in these festivities. We refer rather to the bonds of a 



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wedlock sealed twenty-five years ago, when Dr. Spaulding assumed the 
headship of Barre Academy as his bride. I make no mention here of a 
previous marriage with a most prosperous institution at Bakersfield, and 
prolonged for eleven years, and wonderfully prolific in its progeny, 
except to say that the sons and daughters by that marriage, — repre- 
sented here in goodly numbers, — must be received by you of the younger 
circle as equally in honor with yourselves, and with something, too, of a 
cordial welcome, since we come, — in forgetfulness of our own, — to cast 
our gifts at the feet of a step-mother. Honoring your mother equally 
with yourselves, we insist upon being received by you with a magna- 
nimity the equivalent of our own, and without even an exposure to the 
peril of a "family quarrel." We call this a silver wedding, but it is 
altogether in the interests of the hride. The bridegroom himself, with 
remarkable generosity and self-sacrifice, asks us to turn our thoughts 
and regards from him, and to bestow them upon his partner at the altar 
in the device of liberal things for her future, when he is gone and she is 
left behind. Though still in the vigor of a robust manhood, his eye 
hardly dim nor his natural force abated, our honored instructor is yet 
nearing the period when he will cease from his earthly labors ; and it is 
not enough for him to know that his decease will be the signal for a 
wide-spread and a heavy grief among his old pupils, and in the com- 
munity at large ; and that a grateful affection will lavish its munificence 
in a monumental pile, dug from the quarry, to pay him a voiceless 
homage. He rightfully asks for a more substantial tribute to his 
memory, — in such an endowment of Barre Academy that its very exis- 
tence shall not hang tremulous upon his fleeting breath. Whatever be 
our theory to the contrary, we are compelled to-day to surrender some- 
what our republican simplicity, in paying homage to what is often 
offensively denominated a one-man power. I use the expression in this 
connection not only as void of all offence, but as pronouncing a high 
tribute of respect. Bakersfield Academical Institution lived and moved 
and had its being in Jacob S. Spaulding. Hence it came to pass, and 
with no fault of his, that when he left that picturesque village in the 
north, the institution for whose upbuilding and prosperity he had 
labored with such untiring industry ceased virtually to exist. And it 
may be affirmed, with hardly a modification, that the same individual 
power has been exerted in his service for Barre Academy. What more 
has this institution been, for a period now of twenty-five years, than the 
embodiment of the life and labors of its distinguished principal ? This 
suggests the painful inquiry as to its destiny when Dr. Spaulding's con- 
nection with it shall be no more. Shall the catastrophe at Bakersfield 
be repeated here ? Shall the memorial of Barre Academy perish from 
among men ? Another consideration of no small moment must here 



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command our attention. When Mr. Spaulding left Bakersfield Academy 
for your own, he brought with him in his own person, in a sense, the 
institution which he had served, and embodied it in this. Bakersfield 
poured over its contributions into Barre, through him as the vehicle of 
conveyance. Hence if this one man could have his term of service in 
the earth so prolonged as to enable him to build up a third institution, 
in some other section of the State, and carry up the glory and honor of 
these previous schools into it, why, there might be found some compen- 
sation for the vacancies that are left behind. But this can not be. 
Such a prolongation of a useful life can not be supposed. Our beloved 
teacher has cast his lot for life here in Barre ; here he has enjoyed his 
most signal success, and here he will close his term of service in the 
earth. When he next strikes his tent it will be to 

" wrap the drapery of his couch 

About him, and lie down to pleasant dreams," 

and the question is, shall he leave behind him " a local habitation and a 
name" in Barre Academy, endowed and perpetuated, embodying his 
ideas of academical training and classical learning, or shall he carry 
with him to his grave this institution, so that the same monument that 
perjietuates his name shall signalize its extinction ? This is a question 
which I raise not simply here in Barre, and among us as alumni : it is 
a question which I propound to the people of Vermont at large. Can 
this commonwealth afford to allow the instructor whose term of service 
in his profession in the State has been continued beyond that of any 
other man ; who has had under .him more than ten thousand pupils,— hj 
far more than any other teacher in the State ; and who has done more 
than any other teacher in bringing to bear directly upon our youth the 
appliances of a Christian education, upheaving a succession of gener- 
ations into a higher and nobler life, — I say, can this Commonwealth 
afford to allow such a benefactor to pass away, with no other visible 
memorial of his service than the granite shaft that marks his resting- 
place ? This is not a qviestion simply of personal affection, raised by 
loving pupils; it is a question in the interests of general justice, of edu- 
cation, of sound morals and religion ; it is a question, too, of political 
economy, of profit and loss to the State. As we require that certain 
churches in the State, — as in St. Albans, in Peacham, in Middle- 
bury, in Cornwall, and in Montpelier, — shall embody the Christian 
influence, and preserve the names of Worthington Smith, and 
Leonard Worcester, and Thomas A. Merrill, Jedediah Bushnell, and 
William H. Lord, so it is demanded that a permanent institution of 
learning shall arise here amidst these tranquil scenes of Dr. Spaulding's 
labors, that shall embody his ideas and principles, and preserve his 
memorial on the earth. And this, not for his sake, but in the interest 



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of sound learning and Christian morals. As we do not require churches 
to exist in order to perpetuate the names of their pastors, but to per- 
petuate the names of their pastors in the interests of religion ; so we 
require that this institution shall he founded upon a permanent financial 
basis, and with abundant equipment ; not that it may simply transmit to 
the future the name of our honored teacher, — he himself would be the 
first to repudiate the thought, — but that it may transmit that name in 
the interests of Christian learning. The State can not afford to entrust 
the reputation of such a benefactor to our short-lived and treacherous 
memories. Though he may have ten thousand monuments sacred to his 
memory, in the persons of as many pupils, still these monuments are 
perishable, and are fast crumbling into dust. Let there arise, then, at 
this geographical center of the State, in this romantic dell, among these 
hills of transcendent natural beauty, an institution, the outgrowth of 
Barre Academy as its germ, and embodying its life and power, but 
permanently founded, and adequately equipped ; advanced, as the times 
demand, to a higher grade of excellence and of service ; an institution 
whose every part shall be vital with the spirit of our instructor ; in 
whose halls shall linger the fragrance of his memory, and who, "being 
dead, yet speaketh " in its chairs of instruction to the youth of succeed- 
ing generations. As Phillips Academy, Andover ; Phillips Academy, 
Exeter ; Kimbal Union Academy, Meriden ; Burr and Burton Semi- 
nary, Manchester, are put in trust with the distinguished names of 
Taylor, Abbott, Richards, and Wickham, to preserve them as illustra- 
tions of the dignity, nobility, and greatness of the teacher's profession, 
and as examples to command a following ; so ought Barre Academy to 
have a future, unalterably associated with the character and services of 
the man whose memory it perpetuates in the interests of learning. 

I offer no apology for bringing before you a subject of such practical 
moment, and for pressing it upon your attention as one that is intrin- 
sically serious. We are courteously invited here at the old homestead, to 
participate in the festivities of a silver-wedding ; and what boots it now 
that we have come, if there is " no silver in it " for the bride ? In 
ordinary academical reunions, some literary theme would naturally 
engage our attention ; but this convocation is extraordinary, can never 
be repeated, and has an enterprise to be achieved for its issue. Account it 
not strange, then, if my utterances are with a view to business. And 
the question now arises, is there any public demand for such an institu- 
tion as Barre Academy, based upon an ample endowment, and amply 
equipped ? Is there any place for the academy in our Vermont school- 
system ? And what is the s/jecial form of service to which it is called? 
And what are some of the conditions of its success ? These questions 
are in perfect keeping with the distinctive aim of this reunion of 



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alumni, and not to consider them would be an inadvertence which you 
would be slow to forgive. A rapid glance at our system of schools will 
be enough to show the demand there is for the Academy, and the place 
that it is required to fill. 

In this survey, we notice first the old district schools, established 
everywhere in the State, and extending their benefits to every family 
circle. They are a precious inheritance from the fathers ; the peoples' 
college ; called common schools, not in odium as though they were vul- 
gar, but in honor, as inclusive of all ; where the humblest child of the 
humblest laborer can receive a cordial welcome. Of these schools we 
have in Vermont two thousand five hundred and nineteen, containing 
upwards of seventy-one thousand pupils. With a view to the improve- 
ment of these schools, we have established in the State three Normal 
Schools,* whose mission it is to furnish substantial aid in qualifying 
teachers for their work. 

Homogeneous in spirit with the common schools, and of an equally 
popular cast, but an advance upon them in excellence in many partic- 
ulars, are the graded schools in our larger villages. Our fathers knew 
nothing of these schools, in their day. They have come into being 
among us within the last twenty-five years. They originated, however, 
by the law of natural growth ; and the wonder now is that they could 
have lingered so long. While they are an immense gain on the score of 
economy, — educating the largest number of youths with the least ex- 
pense, — they are so systematized as to enforce order and method in study, 
the higher classes always a powerful stimulus to the lower ones. Besides 
this, they furnish excellent facilities for pursuing the higher English and 
classical studies. Hence it has come to pass that we often find in the 
high-school departments of our graded schools, examples of accurate and 
thorovTgh scholarship. The economy of these graded schools, moreover, 
renders it practicable to command a high grade of teachers. Some of 
the best instruction imparted in the State is by teachers who stand at 
the head of these schools. Students fitted for college under them are 
standing in the first rank in college classes. Of these graded schools 
we now have thirty-three, and their number is destined greatly to 
increase. Fourteen of these have arisen in villages where previously 
incorporated academies had existed, and where, organically conjoined 
with them, the academies have become the high-school departments in 
the graded system. This is an immense advantage, both to the academies 
themselves and to the schools that have united under them on the graded 

* Randolpli Normal School, Randolph, Vt. : Abel E. Leavenworth, A.M., 
Principal. 
Johnson Normal School, Johnson, Yt. : William C. Crippen, A.M., Principal. 
Castleton Normal School, Castleton, Vt. : Walter E. Howard, A.M., Principal. 



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plan. As you may naturally infer, these thirty-tliree graded schools, ele- 
vated to such a standard of excellence, manned by first-class teachers, 
and located at commercial centres of commanding influence, must be an 
immense power in the State. They are educating sorne ten thousand 
pupils. And it is to be noticed that they draw in a large attendance of 
students from beyond the limits of the districts by which they are cir- 
cumscribed. A large revenue accrues to the treasuries of these union 
districts in tuition derived from this source. The managers of these 
schools have taken note of this fact, and insist upon commanding the 
best teachers possible, and upon giving to their schools a reputation for 
thoroughness of drill, and culture, and elevation of moral tone, that 
will put them in favor with the people of their section of the State, 
and draw in a large foreign patronage : wisely reasoning that the excel- 
lence in the school that draws students from abroad, is the very excel- 
lence required to confer benefit upon their own students at home. Such 
schools have not only the advantage of 'being excellent for the union 
districts, but of laying the burden of their support upon an extended 
region. No iDolicy can be more imbecile than for a union school district 
to run a school of so low a grade of excellence as to require it to carry 
all its burdens. The very quality which puts it into disfavor with the 
people abroad, will reduce.it to a minimum service at home. 

In regard to these union graded schools, let three things be observed : 
First, that they are not to diminish, but increase in number. A school 
of this kind once established and under way in a prosperous village, 
will be found to be so much in harmony with the principles of common 
sense, and grounded in such a basis of economy and, withal, prove so 
beneficial in its results, that it will become inevitably as permanent as 
the village itself, and as continuous as succeeding generations. If the 
thirty-three schools of this class, now established in the State, settle 
into this condition of permanence and prosperity, we may be assured 
that their example will be followed at other growing centres, and their 
number become greatly multiplied. Secondly, as these graded schools 
continue at these larger growing centres, they will not be allowed to 
deteriorate, but be required to advance in excellence and efficiency, and 
to become more and more the pride and glory of the villages in the 
midst of which their stately school structures ascend in substantial 
beauty. Not only so, imbibing the spirit of advance, village will vie 
with village, in honorable competition, for the palm of victory. Mean- 
while men of wealth at these points, interested in education, ambitious 
for their towns, wishing to lighten the burden of taxation, and raise 
their schools to a high eminence, will come forward with their liberal 
gifts and endowments. Thus there will be furnished for students in 
their higher departments, the facilities for acquiring an English and 



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classical education Avhicli will enable them to vie with the best academ- 
ical institutions in the land. A third point concerning these schools is 
that they will be able to command the services of the best class of 
teachers. They will offer definite salaries ; they will offer liberal sala- 
ries ; 6n conditions of success, they will offer positions of permanent 
service. This is as it should be. Men who make teaching a profession, 
should have, like other professional ^men, fields of permanent labor. 
Finding such fields, they will settle for life. And notice that teachers 
permanently established in the larger towns, and having an established 
reputation, will exert a dominant influence in their sections of the 
State, and command a wide patroiiage for their schools. For these 
reasons, then, I put our graded schools in among the certainties of the 
future, and predict for them a career of great usefulness in moulding the 
character and directing the destiny of the future mind of our State. 

Turning now from our common schools and our graded schools, let us 
mark the condition and prospects of our academies. Counting out the 
fourteen which we have found to stand at the head of as many graded 
schools, we have left, located at different points over the State, twenty- 
six incorporated academies. Many of these, however, have but a nom- 
inal existence ; are in operation only a part of the year ; and can be 
relied upon as conferring no higher benefit upon the community than 
private or select schools that start up here and there, now and then, 
and which accomplish only a temporary service. It has been a very 
easy and a very common thing for the people in different localities in 
the State, for the past fifty years, to start up, raise subscriptions, erect 
buildings, secure charters, engage teachers, and set academies agoing ; 
but it has been, meanwhile, a very hard and a very rare thing to get 
such institutions, on no other financial basis than that accruing from 
tuition, to hold on their way and jDrosper. The average academy in 
Vermont has been little better than a spasm, and convulsive at that ; 
its terms of study through the j^ear, a series of popular gatherings. 
Put under way by high pressure, it has been too often heterogeneous, 
tumultuous, noisy, unsatisfactory ; but, in all its defects, having this 
one virtue, that it soon fulfilled its course. Meanwhile, however, we 
have had academies that have towered high above this offensive aver- 
age ; and that have conferred great and lasting blessings upon the com- 
munity. Their success mi;st be referred primarily either to the finan- 
cial basis on which they have been grounded, and which has secured 
their perpetuity, or to the men whom they have fortunately secured for 
principals, whose generalship, in organizing and marshalling students, 
in bringing order out of chaos, and keeping their institutions in whole- 
some life and running order, has been the equivalent of genius. We 
have had but few such men ; and towering above them all, — the Nestor 



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of Vermont teachers, — stands the man whom we honor in this reunion 
in the coronet, fashioned from our gifts, which, with his consent, we 
place upon the brow of his bride. Let not our academies count upon 
the frequent appearance of such men upon the stage of action ; they are 
rare, "like stars when only one is shining in the sky." And it is a 
question which may be debated, whether such men, should they appear 
in the State, in the present changed relation of things, could run careers 
of success to match their predecessors on the basis of tuition. I am firm 
in the conviction that should the full equal of Mr. Spauldmg, when 
graduated from college, appear at this date at the most favorable point 
in the State, it would be impossible for him, in the present order of 
things, running an academy on the basis of any tuition which the peo- 
ple would tolerate, to repeat the illustrious career which we have wit- 
nessed. Like Melchizedek, our honored teacher is the first and the last 
of his race. The difficulties to be overcome in repeating such instances^ 
of success, may be referred to two sources : first, the lack of confidence 
which the people disclose in any institution founded on tuition bills y 
secondly, the spirit of sharp competition that is rife in the State among 
educational as well as among all other institutions. Here notice that 
an unendowed academy must make headwa}^ by creating a public confi- 
dence in the probability of its success. This is hard to do. Again, it 
must succeed by withstanding competition : (1) from the graded schools 
which we have been considering, — schools so distributed in the State as 
to be conveniently accessible to the great majority of the people, — schools 
of acknowledged reputation, and all the while advancing in excellence ; 
(2) from endowed academies, commanding confidence from their mon- 
etary basis, high boards of instruction, and ample equipment with all 
required facilities for work ; and again, (3) from endowed academies 
under the supervision and fostering care of different religious denomina- 
tions. Many of our most successful academical institutions are founded 
upon a denominational idea, and are run in the interest of denomina- 
tional ends. The spirit in which they were devised, and established, 
and manned, and put in operation, was the spirit of a denominational 
faith. This faith has not been often narrowly and offensively sectarian, 
but in general broad and magnanimous. At this point, however, a phe- 
nomenon appears, in the usage of the Congregational chiirches of the 
State. They have never established an academy on an ecclesiastical idea, 
or managed one with a view to ecclesiastical work. On this subject 
they hold an anomalous position. While we have several prosperous 
academies under boards and teachers, and in communities of the Congre- 
gational belief, still the denominational idea never appears full high ad- 
vanced upon their fronts. It is never disclosed in the names by which 
these academies are known. No organic connection exists between the 



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Congregational churches of the State and institutions of this class. In 
the general convention of these churches, there is never any recegnition 
of the existence of any Congregational academies. The convention has 
never created any, assumed the direction or support of any ; and it never 
listens to any appeal from this source. In short, the Congregational 
churches of Vermont in convention assembled have just as vital organic 
connection with academies under Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, and 
Universalist direction, as with those that commonly pass as under their 
denominational influence. More : Congregational ministers, neither in 
their pulpits nor in pastoral work, call upon their people to patronize 
one academy, or class of academies, in preference to another. If there 
are exceptions to this, they are rare. From this it is made to appear 
that should a teacher open a school in the State with a view to rt peat 
the equivalent of Mr. Spaulding's thirty-six years service, he would be 
required to accomplish his task by creating public confidence in it as 
practicable, and by withstanding competition from graded schools, from 
endowed academies, and from endowed academies under denominational 
supervision and support. And here I add that all these embarrassments 
will stand in the way of Dr. Spaulding's successor in this institution, 
and if it remains unendowed, they will crush him. The present prin- 
cipal, backed up by his long success and reputation, can keep the in- 
stitution going while he lives. He himself is fund and endowment, — 
its crystal vault. But his successor can not be in his own person such 
a deposit ; and, in the circumstances, can never succeed in being. Hence 
the obligation upon the people of Barre and vicinity, upon the people of 
Vermont at large, and upon us as alumni, to accomplish the task to 
which we are committed, — the ample and thorough endowment of this 
institution. 

It may be objected that we have in the State academies enough with- 
out the continuation of our own. Let us recall what we have of this 
class of schools. At Poultney, in Kutland county, we have the Troy 
Conference Academy ; at Burlington, in Chittenden county, we have 
the Episcopal Institute ; at Saxton's River, and at Townshend, in Wind- 
ham county, we have the Vennmit Baptist Academy, and Lealand and 
Gray Seminary ; in Montpelier and Barre, in Washington county, the 
centre county of the State^ we have the Vermo7it Conference Sem,inary 
and Goddard Seminary. These institutions, conveniently distributed 
over the State, may be called expressly and distinctively denominational 
schools, since they are established and kept in operation to subserve the 
interests and enhance the prosperity of the churches with which they 
are respectively connected. Though open to all students not of their 
religious faith, still the denominational spirit and aim of each is so pro- 
nounced a feature in its policy, that students would not feel as welcome 



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and as much at home in them as they otherwise would. Besides these 
now mentioned, we have at St. Johnsbury, in Caledonia county, the St. 
Johnsbury Academy ; at Manchester, in Bennington county, the Burr 
and BuHon Seviinai-y y at New Haven, in Addison county, the Beaman 
Academy ; at Essex, in Chittendon county, the Essex Classical Institute ; 
and at Thetford, in Orange county, the Thetford Academy. There are 
other academies in the State which have done and are doing excellent 
service, bat which, not knowing them to be endowed, receive here no 
special mention, — such as the academies at Albany, Bakersfield, Brattle- 
boro, Bristol, Chelsea, Derby, Lyndon, Peacham, Royalton, and Shore- 
ham. The five academies specially mentioned above, and most of the 
others here enumerated, while under the general management and direc- 
tion of Congregationalists, are yet, in both form and spirit, so undenom- 
inational as to give them a wider catholicity than that which character- 
izes the academies first named, — a catholicity which enables them to 
make a stronger appeal than they can to the patronage of the general 
public. If the Congregationalists lose something from their refusing 
to denominationalize their schools, they rejoice meanwhile in the com- 
pensation which they receive in a greater good conferred upon the com- 
munity at large. Now if it is said that taking these academies all told, 
denominational and undenominational, we have too many, I agree. It 
is a pleasing fact that the tendency of things is toward their rapid dim- 
inution. For most of these, their day is passed and their occupation is 
gone. The majority of these must fall victims to that inexorable and 
beneficent law which permits only "the survival of the fittest." It may 
seem invidious for me to hint which of these institutions will abide this 
test. But I do venture to say that our distinctively denominational 
schools will, in general, stand their ground and have a prosperous future. 
I am also confident that several of the academies mentioned as not de- 
nominational in any special sense, whether at the present time endowed 
or not, are also destined to a successful career. We rest in this, that 
Vermont is to have some eight or ten prosperous academical institutions. 
They may be located at Saxton's Eiver, at Manchester, at Poultney, at 
New Haven, at Townshend, in this valley, on Seminary Hill, at Essex, 
at St. Johnsbury, at Bakersfield, or at other favorable localities; but 
they are destined to exist and to come into prominence, — some of them 
to match the very best institutions of the kind on the continent. The 
need we have for about this number of academies, of the kinds and grade 
of excellence specified, arises from several considerations. 

They are needed, first, on the ground of convenience and inexpen- 
siveness. We have two hundred and seven towns not accommodated 
by graded schools within their limits. So far as the vast majority of 
the people need educational advantages above the common schools, they 



(15) 

must resort to the graded schools, if we have no academies. But it 
cannot be conceived as either wise or practicable, for two hundred and 
twelve towns to be dependent upon graded schools located in thirty-three 
of our larger villages. Not to speak of the inconvenience of such an 
arrangement, I will say that the expense of it erects an insuperable 
barrier. The cost to students of attending school at commercial centres, 
like St. Albans, Burlington, Brattleboro, Woodstock, and Eutland, must 
be, without special arrangements made in their favor, much higher than 
at points where academies are commonly located. If the three thousand 
one hundred and fifty-eight students in attendance upon our academies 
during the past year had been required to withdraw either to their 
homes or to enter the graded schools, the great majority would have 
withdrawn to their homes, and the increased expense of attending 
school in the large villages would have been the main motive in deter- 
mining the choice. It is a well-known fact that school expenses here in 
Barre Academy and in other similar institutions have always been very 
much less, — less by one-half, than what they have been at St. Albans, 
and villages of that size. 

But academies are required not . only on the score of convenience and 
inexpensiveness, but also, secondly/, on the ground that students from 
our rural towns feel a natural repugnance to going to a large village 
school. Having had fewer advantages, their education may be unequal 
to students of corresponding age in the village, which will require them 
to fall into classes whose average age is very much less than their own. 
This fact, attended by a natural sensitiveness on the score of dress, 
manners, lack of personal culture, all exposing them to criticism and 
remark, will be enough to make them ill at ease, and keep them out of 
the village schools. This may be true of young ladies at that age, 
when they seek a higher than a common school education ; but it is pre- 
eminently true of young men from rural towns who have been brought 
up to farm work, and who have more brain than polish, — who are often 
diamonds in the rough. When young men and young ladies of this 
class, little behind in their studies, ambitious to make up what they 
have lost, intent upon an education, appreciating the value of time and 
money, and accustomed to dispatch whatever they undertake, are placed 
in graded-school classes, they become often impatient of their slow rate 
of progress. In this particular they can be better accommodated often 
in an academy, where a greater general maturity of mind justifies a 
more rapid movement. Again, young men and young ladies in these 
two hundred and seven towns, naturally prefer to go to institutions 
whose patronage is mainly from these towns, and where the students 
stand upon a general social level, and where there prevails a community 
of interests and a general home-feeling. They are birds of a feather 



(16) 

and they flock together, and they do it without acknowledging that 
they are any wise inferior to birds in the village of a different feather, 
and that do the same. It is noticeable that our most prosperous acade- 
mies have been situated in small villages, and where the local patronage 
has never overpowered and given tone to the institution. The students 
coming from abroad have had the ascendancy. Local patronage has 
come in as a factor, but required to pass for its simple, numerical worth 
in the general reckoning. Students from rural townships, as a rule, do 
not enjoy going to a village school where they are absorbed in the local 
attendance. They do not take easily to the process of naturalization 
required to make them socially homogeneous with the village students. 
They greatly prefer to be by themselves ; and in the rural academy 
they are so. I do not say that it is fortunate that this should be the 
case, but it is ; and it is, in part, upon this fact of a distinction of feel- 
ing between rural and village youth, that the academy is to be ac- 
counted a necessity ? If it is objected that a large number of these 
two hundred and seven towns are located in such immediate business 
and social contact with the larger towns, and partake so much of their 
life and culture, and that the youth of these outlying towns are not so 
uninstructed and uncultured in village life and ways as to be ill at ease 
in their best society, and that my position holds only in part, — all I 
have to say is that there is truth enough remaining to my position, to 
require me to affirm it. Let it be true that the youth in towns contig- 
uous to St. Johnsbury and Middlebury are in such social affiliation 
with youth at these centres, that they will be attracted to the graded 
schools in these villages : still, what of youth in the same section of 
the State in towns still further removed from these centres, and who 
only visit them often enough to feel their awkwardness whenever they 
come into contact with their society ? Do you say "All the more need 
that they come and get rid of their awkwardness " ? My reply is that 
they will, in nine cases in ten, keep the disease rather than to submit to 
your method of cure. If you provide no other means for their educar 
tion above what the district school gives, except the graded schools, 
they will be content with a district-school education. The vast majority 
of young people in Franklin and Grand Isle counties will never go to 
any but district schools, who otherwise would, if they are shut up to the 
alternative of attending the graded schools at St. Albans, or at Swan- 
ton. But establish a good academy at Bakersfield, or at Franklin, or at 
Sheldon, and they will come ; for in such an academy they will not feel 
the restraints enforced by the customs and conventional usages of the 
place. This is not saying that youth from rural towns, gathered in the 
academy, are impatient of law and order, and wish to live at random, — 
it is otherwise ; they are ambitious of good order, and seek to promote 



(17) 

it in a straight-forward attention to business. The best studying ever 
done in the State has been done in the Academy, where it has had a fair 
chance. Perhaps I ought to except the college ; but if so, I do it with 
the suspicion that I was sufficiently accurate in my first statement. It 
is not the culture and good order of the village school that the young 
people in question object to, but the social lines that are drawn against 
them, the elbow strokes and and sneers of mock-culture, fashion's glit- 
ter and tinsel, that so often overpower homely but genuine merit, — these 
are the offense. 

This suggests a third reason for the Academy, — the moral peril to 
which young people, coming from rural towns, would be exposed in at- 
tending in such numbers as the case would require, our graded schools. 
Our village youth are measurably secure against evil influences, for they 
are not severed from home, and a watchful, parental supervision is 
always exercised over them. They are not uninformed as to where evil 
is, and what are its modes of assault ; and they are thus put on their 
guard. If it is said that the youth already in attendance upon our large 
village schools, from surrounding and remoter towns, are not greatly 
exposed, my reply is that the young people commonly in attendance 
from such towns, are not hoarders ■proper, but are inmates in the families 
of relations and friends, and who have thus extended over them still the 
protection of home influences. The security accorded to such students 
would not extend to the great majority who ought to attend the graded 
schools, if no academies were open to them. Coming fronti our rural 
towns into our large villages as hoarders, measurably uninstructed in 
village life and customs, honest and frank to a fault, disposed to trust 
all who appear to befriend them, having eyes unpracticed to discern the 
approaches of evil ; their exposure to guileful influences would be great. 
In all our large places there are persons who belong to the class whom 
the apostle denominates the " baser sort." They are often accomjdished 
in their bearing and manners. They wear the guise of virtue ; they 
glory in their creed of honor ; they find associates in the older circles 
in the graded schools, and, through this avenue, find it easy to gain 
access to all who enter these schools from the country towns. These 
youth from the country, — neglected by their village associates in study 
and possibly repelled and scorned, — are pleased with any attention paid 
them by yet another class from the village, who profess a chivalric 
interest in them, and who ought to be repelled on the instant. Unpro- 
tected by true friends, they are left in the dark to find their own way 
as best they can. If they abide the test and escape unharmed, it is not 
because the exposure was not prodigious, but because of the strength of 
religious principle, previously inculcated, and their adherence to it. In 
the academy under the best management there is peril enough, but it is 



. (18) 

far less than we liere find. Located in a small village, where few places 
of temptation exist, the students of an Academy are less dispersed 
among the people, and therefore are more under their own mutual super- 
vision and watch-care. The lamhs are not scattered in the village 
forest, hence are less exposed to the beasts of prey that prowl within it. 
Under the more immediate superintendence of the school authorities, 
and guarded by a tireless vigilance, they are much more secure than 
when they live at large, as graded school-children do in an expansive 
village, but who, unlike such children, are required to live without the 
restraint and endearments of home to protect them. 

A. fourth reason for the Academy, is found in the superior advantages 
furnished by it to the students who naturally attend it. To a great 
extent isolated from immediate local surroundings and influences, and 
running the roots of its life out into a broader field, it can lift itself into 
a condition of independence which the graded school has not. Under 
the control of a board of trustees, rather than the voters at the annual 
school meeting, it can assert a life of its own, and have a steadier aim. 
The graded school must be more confined to locality, imbedded in the 
community, and receive to a greater extent the drift and force of its 
life from the pulsations of society in its immediate neighborhood. I do 
not mean that the Academy is to beat its retreat from society, like a 
monastery, or stand aj^art from the people in aristocratic isolation, like 
a baronial castle ; but I do say that it should be more retired from the 
world than^the graded school can be. It should be shut into a solitude 
peculiar to itself. It should have a character of its own ; it should 
create an atmosphere of its own ; it should settle into a compactness of 
its own ; in the lapse of time it should take to itself an historic spirit, 
and have its established usages and traditions. Applied to such an 
institution, tlie very word academy would be transfigured before us, and 
be raised to a loftier and nobler dignity. It would be the very expres- 
sion of order and law, and intelligent will and authority. Like the 
college, it should have its parallel courses of English and classical study, 
and they should be established and inflexible. Students entering it, 
must be prepared to fall into existing classes without retarding them, 
and with the purpose to complete the courses of study which they enter 
upon. Such a retention of students in orderly study from term to term 
and from year to year, will give to the academy a self-consistence and a 
continuity of life absolutely needed in order to its growth and pros- 
perity. Again, the Academy reaps an advantage in the absence of the 
crowds of children that flock to the graded schools. These children 
may form a beautiful and an attractive spectacle, and yet accomplish 
nothing in augmenting the interest of the school to the more mature 
and advanced scholars. At their age, scholars are always disposed to 



(19) 

retire from the multitude, which is diverting, and form a community by 
themselves. The Academy is. such a community. Having a life of its 
own and by itself, unencroached upon, and therefore unembarrassed by 
local interferences, it can assert the dignity of an institution, — have its 
literary societies, its debating club, and its school journal. The good 
conferred upon students in the Academy through these instrumentalities 
is incalculable. Not a few of the leading men in all professions, and 
many of the best orators in the country, were first stimulated to action 
by the discussions and literary exercises of the old-time Academy. It is 
to be feared that this feature of the Academy does not reappear in the 
graded schools of the State, except in rare instances, and then in an 
enfeebled form. It must be agreed, that an Academy wherein the stu- 
dents are more mature, who stand upon the same social footing, and 
who are more agreed in their tastes and aspirations, offers to the young 
people of our towns in general, better facilities for all forms of thorough 
training aud high intellectual culture, than the graded school. 

This prepares us to consider a fifth reason, showing the demand we 
have for the Academy, namely, the interests of classical learning. It is 
an instructive fact that in our twenty-six academies, where the aggre- 
gate attendance is only little more than three thousand, we have four 
hundred and twenty-four students announced as preparing for college ; 
while in the ten thousand students connected with our graded schools, 
we have only two hundred and twenty-two who have the college course 
in view. From this it appears that about one in eight of our academy- 
students is studying for college, while in our graded schools we have 
less than one in fifty. It may be said that this difference is to be 
accounted for in part by the fact that the latter have such a large con- 
stituency of small scholars. Agreed ; but does this explain the whole 
difference ? It has always been a noticeable fact that our larger 
villages, like St. Albans, Brattleboro, Rutland, Bennington, notwith- 
standing their wealth and large number of educated and cultured citi- 
zens, send fewer young men to college than an equal population scattered 
abroad in our rural townships. This fact, it is believed, is destined to 
be greatly modified by the improved condition of things under the 
graded system at all these centres, and which includes opportunities to 
prepare for college among its benefits. Still it is inevitable that the 
large village should be controlled by the commercial spirit. The life of 
such a place is not study, but business ; and the boys growing up in its 
schools, from homes whose spirit is too often the spirit of worldliness, 
and in the midst of outward stirring scenes, are almost sure to imbibe 
a distaste for study, and to prefer a life of business activity. 

Now, as we have noticed, the graded school is located in the village ; 
and its spirit must come into direct and influential contact with it. 



(20) 

It must draw up into it like a sponge, — by a law of social attraction, — 
the commercial and business temper of the place, and that temper is 
inimical to classical study. Young men who join our graded schools 
from country towns are often unfavorably influenced by the secular 
spirit of the village infused into the character and tastes of these schools. 
Send a young man here to Barre Academy, or to Burr and Burton 
Seminary, to fit for college, and the chances are ten to one better that 
he will succeed, than they would be if you sent him to the graded school 
in Bennington or Vergennes, supjjosing the classical instruction in these 
schools to be equally excellent. No young man ever entered Thetford 
Academy, in Hiram Orcutt's day, without exposing himself to the peril 
of going to college. Such was the spirit of the institution. Of the 
scores who entered college from under this distinguished teacher, not 
half of them ever had any decided purpose to go to college till they came 
under his instruction. They breathed that purpose into them from the 
very atmosphere which they inhaled when they came upon Thetford 
Hill. But the young man in the graded schools at St. Albans, Brattle- 
boro, Rutland, and at other similar points, has been in very little peril 
from this exjiosure for the j)ast twenty -five years. This is owing to the 
difference in schools, arising from difference of material of which they 
are constituted. In the one instance the school is made up of young 
men from country towns ; in the other, from boys gathered in from the 
streets of a thriving village. The Academy, retired from the noisy 
crowd, complete in the plenitude of its own life, asserting an independ- 
ence of the worldly tastes and sympathies of a business community, 
and full of the spirit of study and scholarly culture, furnishes all the 
facilities required in order to a thorough literary and classical discipline. 
Academies of this character, established at convenient points, are the 
crying demand of our State. They are needed as the means of calling 
out from among our hills and valleys, and from the bosoms of our com- 
munities, multitudes of young men and women who otherwise would 
waste their lives in ignorant obscurity. The kind of culture which they 
would foster, and the thirst for knowledge, the latent forces which they 
would evoke and the noble ambition, would make them engines of 
mighty power in the State, and send multitudes of young men to college, 
and through the college to places of eminent service in the world. You 
have heard of a modern invention, — " a trap to catch a sunbeam." But 
I enter my plea for Academies, wherewith to entrap our young men for 
college, and to send them forth as orbs of light in the earth. We have 
young men who need to be thus caught, and the world needs their 
service. 

Without denying to our graded schools an important service in behalf 
of the classics, I yet affirm that Academies must remain the bulwarks 



(21) 

of classical learning, and be, on the whole, the source of the highest and 
most thorough discipline imparted in the State, outside the college. It 
gives me-pleasure to confirm the position which I have here taken by an 
appeal to such excellent authority as that of Professor Greene, of Brown 
University. He says : " Let it not be said, then, that the day of 
Academies is gone bj', — that they have no place in our systems of 
higher education. They are, and they are to be in all coming time, the 
nurseries of our colleges, — the institutions which are to gather in the 
unawakened material from all parts of the land, and inspire it with the 
true classical spirit. In respect to the kind of instruction imparted in 
them, the classical element should predominate ; and this is saying 
nothing against scientific schools, normal schools, technical schools, 
agricultural schools, or any other of the many good schools which have 
arisen in the country for special purposes ; but it is saying what the 
Academy should aspire to be. It should be a classical school ; not of 
the highest grade, for then it would cease to be an Academy and become 
a university; but of the highest order in its grade, — a preparatory 
classical school, in which the student begins to acquire classical tastes." 
But the sixth, and perhaps the most important, reason for the 
Academy, is found in the fact that it can be made to be distinctively 
and positively religious in its 'character and discipline. This is for- 
bidden to our common schools and our graded schools. The Bible may 
not be actually excluded from them ; prayers may be permitted, and 
sometimes encouraged; still these public schools can not be allowed to 
take upon themselves those forms of direct religious culture which ars 
not only tolerated, but absokitely required as a condition of success in 
the Academy. Its moral and religious life is expected to be one of its 
most marked and distinguished characteristics. And this has been the 
historic feature in the New-England Academy. It would be an anomaly 
to find an institution of this class, that has enjoyed any permanent 
success, which has not asserted and maintained a pronounced religious 
life and culture, — which has not had its established religious service 
and stated prayer-meeting. We ought as soon to find a sanctuary 
without a, pulpit, or a Christian home without a family altar. Since 
this has been a leading feature in the Academy, and can be in the future 
with augmented emphasis, therefore it is demanded. As it is needed 
in the interests of classical learning to counterbalance the business and 
commercial tendencies of the graded schools, so it is needed in the 
interests of religion to offset the absence of positive religious training in 
them. It is agreed that the crying demand of the State is for Academies 
of this distinctively religious character, — institutions so thoroughly Chris- 
tian, that for young people to enter them would be to awaken the expec- 
tation of their being redeemed and saved, if they were not before they 



(22) 

came. Let no one say that Academies of such a type and tendency 
would repel our young people. They would attract them.* Youthful 
mind is so made of God in his image, that it revolts from the idea of 
an institution purposely devoid of the restraints and encouragements 
of the Christian religion. Let there arise in the neighborhood of an 
evangelical Academy, an institution of opposite character to counteract 
its influences, and not many years will elapse before its walks will in- 
vite the mower's scythe and its halls stand desolate as those of Palmyra 
of the desert, where owls hoot and satyrs dance. When IrJialod is in- 
scribed upon the portals of an institution of learning by its founders, 
we may say of it that its "judgment now for a long time lingereth not, 
and its damnation slumbereth not." 

Such, now, are some of the demands for the Academy. It is required 
on the ground of convenience and lightness of expense; it is needed 
because of the natural repugnance which young people from country 
towns feel to attending school in a large village ; it is to be demanded 
on account of the moral peril involved, in requiring our youth to 
seek their higher education among strangers in a commercial town ; it 
is to be insisted upon, since, removed from the distractions of a crowded 
village, it furnishes an opportunity for retired and uninterrupted study ; 
it is to be prized as peculiarly fitted to awaken and foster a spirit of 
high literary and classical culture ; but preeminently is the Academy 
to be established and sustained, for its unspeakable worth as a fountain 
of evangelical piety and Christian morals. 



*It is a significant fact that the St. Johnsbury Academy has enjoyed a steady 
growth in excellence and in reputation since it was founded, in 1S42, on the 
basis set forth in tlie circular of announcement of tliat date as follows: 

'* It is intended to make the course of study pursued in tlie school a means of 
thorough intellectual discipline, — such discipline as will develop the capacities 
of the student, and make him acquainted with himself. Such training can only 
be accomplislied by a continued and systematic course of study, in which what- 
ever is undertaken shall be thoroughly investigated and understood before it is 
dismissed. A very few studies, judiciously selected and prosecuted in this way, 
though with much expense of patience on the part of the pupil, will better 
qualify him for any station in after-life than a superficial acquaintance with the 
whole circle of studies prosecuted in the schools. In addition to the intellectual 
culture spoken of, it is intended to make it a school of moral and religious in- 
strucfyion, such instruction as contemplates the studenVs relations to a future 
state, and aims to secure his qualification for it in the cultivation of right affec- 
tions and the conversion of the heart. By religious instruction is not intended 
the inculcation of a sectarian creed, but that the fundamental doctrines of the 
Bible will be taught, and the great duties of Repentance and Faith urged upon 
the attention of the school.'' 



(23) 

Having considered some of the demands for the Academy, I will ask 
your attention, as a natural conclusion to the subject which we have 
pursued, to some of the conditions of its success. Several of these, 
already suggested, will require only a glance. 

And first, to enhance its success, the Academy requires a fit location 
for its work. It ought not to be placed in the midst of distracting in- 
fluences of business life, and where temptations abound ; but in some 
retired village. I will also add, that it ought not to be located in im- 
mediate proximity to another institution of similar grade. Such an 
interference with a previously established school is an impertinence, 
and ought, except • in rarest instances, to decree its own speedy extinc- 
tion. The act of a legislature, sustaining such a hostile procedure, by 
g "anting it a charter, ought to be accounted a criminal inconsistency. 

A second condition of success to the Academy, requires it to estab- 
lish and maintain a rigid order of study. Give students the liberty to 
elect in detail their studies, and you so multiply classes that you have 
no time to teach any. They must have freedon to this extent, to 
choose either the Englisli or the classical course; but this choice made, 
they must fall into line just where their attainments locate them. It 
is painfully amusing to observe the caprice often disclosed in the kind 
and number of studies which students, left to themselves, will select. 
I remember distinctly the embarrassments that were wont to encumber 
the opening of a school-term at Bakersfield. You are not unfamiliar 
with what they must have been. Each student asserted a claim to be 
accommodated in his every whim and notion and conceit. Hence 
classes multiplied to an appalling extent. Now our Academies can not 
allow this. Like the graded school and the college, the Academy must 
have its established courses of study, and students who enter it must 
be prepared to fall into line and move on harmoniously with it. 

A third condition of success to the Academy is, that it must be 
grounded in an endowment. It must have invested funds, yielding an 
income to supplement tuition-bills and meet the running expenses of 
the institution. That it can move forward, as this Academy has 
done, without such funds, is possible ; but it will be an achievement 
accomplished only by having at the head of it, as this institution has 
had, a man of remarkable financial ability. And then let no one pre- 
sume to say what immense strides in advance this institution would 
have made, if Dr. Spaulding, in his twenty-five years' work here, hadi 
had at command the income of even a moderate endowment. There- 
are men in the State whose eyes moisten with tears as they contemplate- 
the grandeur of his sustained career as a teacher without hardly a dol- 
lar outside the treasury which he supplied, to use in carrying forward 
his educational plans. "Is it asked," inquires Professor Greene, "how- 



(24) 

it is tlicat iExeter, Andover, East Hampton, and Wilbraham, have main- 
tained their standing, amidst the changes which have been wrought in 
public instruction in the last quarter of a century ? The simple answer 
is, they are amjply endowed.^' " Without endowments," he continues, 
" we can not have the permanence and stability which have given such 
high reputation to our best Academies. The history of Exeter ex- 
tends through a period of upward of eighty years, and yet has had only 
two principals. Dr. Benjamin Abbott was principal for over half a 
century, and Dr. Gideon L. Soule, after having been associated with 
Dr. Abbott for nearly seventeen years, was elected principal in 1838, 
and has served the institution almost an equal period. Dr. Taylor, of 
Andover, has been principal of that Academy for a period of about 
thirty years. Nothing like this can be produced from our unendowed 
schools. Is it a matter of surprise that these seminaries have attained 
such a world-wide reputation ? " 

K. fourth condition of success to the Academy requires an apprecia- 
tion of the difficulties that stand in its way, and a hearty cooperation 
with it on the part of the friends of education and the leaders of 
public opinion. The truth is, the Academy in Vermont is not un- 
like the man who went down to Jericho, — it has fallen into adver- 
sity. There is demand that the friends of education interfere in its 
behalf and deliver it from its misfortune, and restore it to its early 
dignity and service. Among the agencies that should engage in this 
work, I name the Christian pulpit, the press, and our leading educators. 
They should unite to create a better public sentiment in behalf of the 
Academy. I am surprised often to mark the slowness of the pulpit to 
discuss thoroughly and exhaustively matters appertaining to the educa- 
tional interests of the State. Who ever listens to a sermon on the 
common school, the graded school, the academy, or the college ? Who 
ever hears a discussion on their interdependence and relationship ? 
There is an equal loitering on the part of the press, in discussing these 
fundamental interests. Except in connection with some financial as- 
pects of the subject, there is little said editorially. In State educa- 
tional conventions, and county institutes, and school anniversaries there 
is something done, but how meagerly inadequate ? Our judicious and 
indefatigable Superintendent of Public Instruction is* doing excellent 
service in rousing the public mind of the State in this behalf, and our 
town superintendents are measurably engaged with him in labor, and 
many of our teachers are at work ; but, on the whole, what a stride in 
advance do we need to make ? You agree with me in saying, that 
there should be public agitation, — a rousing of our communities in re- 
gard to this vital interest. If I were permitted here, to-day, to turn to 
the principal of this Academy, and ask him what one thing during his 



(25) 

long service in the State had done the most to withstand his efforts and 
oj^press him like a nightmare, I believe he would say in answer, *' The 
general apathy of the community on the subject of education, together 
with its lack of sympathy with me in my appreciation of the needs of 
the Academy, — its nature, dignity, and worth. Though surrounded," 
he continues, " by true friends and supporters and faithful pupils, I yet 
feel, in their failure to see things as I do, that I have lived in Vermont 
thirty-six years, for the most part a solitary nianP It would be pro- 
fane for him to appropriate to himself the memorable words, '' Of the 
people there were none with me," and yet his experience has given him 
a key to unlock their meaning such as few men have. He illustrates the 
fact, not infrequent among workers of his class in our world, — the 
solitude of a great life. I may expose myself to criticism by the use 
of the following imagery; but it is the best that occurs to me to illus- 
trate the kind of struggle which is here suggested. Suppose some one 
of you to be placed out upon Lake Champlain in winter, upon glare ice, 
and to be required there to raise perpendicular some object, — say a 
ladder, thirty feet long. Your natural course would be to seek some 
crevice in the ice, or some immovable obstacle, against which to brace 
its foot, as you enter upon your task. Failing to find such passive as- 
sistance, would you not well nigh give up in despair ? I now claim 
that this figure is not inapposite. Dr. Spaulding has been endeavoring 
to raise the standard of Academy-training and culture in the State for 
many years, and he has called for help. But notice the kind of hel 
which he has most needed. He has not asked for men to come and lift 
with him, — they have had other work to do ; but he has asked them to 
do as much as this passive service, — to hold the foot of the standard 
while he did the lifting. He has asked the Legislature to hold ; the 
Pulpit to hold ; the Press to hold ; and the friends of education to hold ; 
nor have they been deaf to his call. They have rendered him impor- 
tant assistance. But this aid has been mainly moral, the expression of 
sympathy and good-will. Dr. Spaulding has appreciated it ; but he 
has often felt that the foot could have been held firmer, and that he 
could have lifted with more courage and more success, if, combined with 
this moral support, he had had that other kind which certain solid men, 
such as we have in all our communities, might have rendered, in the 
shape of a deposit of vioney-hags at that strategic point, — the foot of 
the standard. How majestically the standard goes up at St. Johns- 
bury, where Thaddeus Fairbanks holds the foot ; and at Andover, and 
Exeter, and Meriden, Easthampton, and Quincy, where Phillips and 
Kimbal and Williston and Adams are doing the same ! It is not im- 
possible, but you may find those who are disposed to criticise, and even 
disparage our honored instructor, since he has not succeeded in estab- 



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lisliing an institution" the full match, of one of these in reputation for 
thoroughness of classical drill and culture ; but I am confident that 
even such persons, should they take into consideration the manifold 
obstacles that have environed him, and impeded his course and baffled 
his hopes, — all the resources at his command, those which he has 
created, — instead of dropping another word of censorious criticism, 
would shed tears of admiring gratitude. 

But consider, ffthhj, and lastly, that associated with the form of ap 
preciation and sympathetic support, which we have considered as com- 
ing from the general public, is the more substantial and helpful service 
which the Academy is to expect from the cooperation of the college. 
As the Academy is aided and upheaved by the primary schools beneath 
it by their pouring their contributions into it, so it is aided and uplifted 
by the college above it, which not only receives in turn its contributions, 
but determines what the character of those contributions shall be, and 
thus furnishes a powerful incentive to it to do excellent work for its stu- 
dents. It is obvious that the Academy, which, as we have seen, is to be 
devoted mainly to the classics and the prejDaration of young men for 
college, will have its character determined, its standard of scholarship 
fixed, by the colleges of its vicinity which it serves as a feeder. Such 
is the dominion of the college at this point, that should an Academy, 
which serves it in this relation, establish for itself a most excellent 
classical course, and engage for its service the best classical instruction, 
still it is in the power of the college utterly to' frustrate the endeavor 
of its founders, and transmute the good which they had prescribed as 
the hio-ht of their ambition, into a tantalizing mockery. 

If the college becomes what Mr. Bancroft, the able principal of 
Phillips Academy, Andover, says it has in some instances, "an inde- 
terminate variable," often ceasing virtually to be a college, by falling to 
the level of a " fitting-school," and which a distinguished graduate of the 
University of Vermont* declares to be the imminent peril of the Ver- 
mont College, — then it obviously so encroaches upon the domain of the 
Academy as to force it back into a primary school, and to deprive it of 
all the dignity and character which it aspired to assert. What estab- 
lishes the grade of classical discii)line and culture in the Academy ? 
Not the trustees in its catalogue ; not the teacher in the class-room, but 
the college for which its students are fitting. Why should they remain 
any longer in the Academy, if they can get into college ? Give us the 
conditions of entrance at a college, and we will give you the grade 
of excellence in the Academies that prepare students for it. If this be 
so and the Academy is what the college makes it, it follows that the 
college can offer no complaint against it, while it accejits its students. 

* Hon. Frederick Billings. 



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And yet this imbecile complaint is A^ery mucli in vogue in some quarters. 
"We have no fitting-schools in the State worthy of the name," says the 
representative of a college which uniformly takes in all who come from 
the very schools that pass under this designation. But to take in such 
students as they are, is to approve of the fitting-schools as they are. 
The only effective way to complain of a fitting-school is to reject its 
students. Such a rejection is the tonic required to put vigorous life into 
it. I am bold to say that most of the fitting-schools of the State are 
suffering for the want of this toning process. Their principals are 
waiting for this form of cooperation. They say to the college, " Im- 
pose on us the necessity of doing better work, and we will do it. You 
have been so long in the hahit of taking in our students uniyrepared, that 
no word of ours is enough to convince those whom we are now fitting 
that they can not enter on the same terms that others have. You must 
speak, and in an act of rejection. If half of the students in our pres- 
ent senior classes should be denied admission to college and come back 
upon our hands, it would be the greatest boon possible to our institutions. 
After the date of such action, should we tell our students who ai-e 
fitting for college, that they have got to go to work and take time to do 
it in, we should speak with an authority so much above our own, and 
enforcing the demand, that our students would accede, and we should 
do work incomparably in advance of what we have accomplished hereto- 
fore." I repeat, the college must not complain of the fitting-school, so 
long as it accepts its work. What would you think of a man Avho, 
entering your orchard, should begin to pluck and eat unripe fruit from 
your trees, and then, with a wry face, scold you for cultivating such an 
inferior variety ? Would you not be tempted mildly to suggest to him 
that he might wait till the fruit has had time to ripen ? that while trees 
are known by their fruit, it is yet not by their green, but by their ripe 
fruit ? Might not the trees themselves, as they did once in the Scrip- 
ture record, hold a colloquy with the sour complainer, and tell him, that 
if he will leave their fruit upon their boughs until they have finished 
their work upon it, and graduated it in regular course, then they will be 
content to abide the toothsome test ? So, likewise, if our colleges pluck 
from the boughs of the Academy its green fruit, and the Academy 
suffers in consequence in its reputation, then not it, but the colleges are 
to be held responsible for the wrong. We must all unite with the 
Principal of Phillips Academy, Andover, in bewailing " the result of the 
so-called practical view of ediication, which, under the patronage of 
genuine but short-sighted benevolence, local ambition, hasty legislation, 
and greed for numbers and endowments, lowers the college standard by 
filching from the Academy a year or more of its best work, thereby de- 
bauching all the restP 



(28) 

But tlie rule works both ways. As it is in the power of the college 
to lower and despoil the Academy, so it is in its power to elevate and 
empower it. And this suggests a phenomenon in the history of classical 
learning in Vermont, the lack of sympathy and cooperation which our 
colleges in the State have shown toward our fitting-schools. " You are 
aware," said General Eaton, the able Commissioner of Education at 
Washington, in a conversation not long since, " that the great want in 
America is Secondary Schools y our colleges and universities have re- 
ceived an excess of attention and endowment in the comparison, and 
are suffering from this fact." Now if this can be said of the country at 
large, it can be reaffirmed with an emphasis, of our own State. And I 
am ready to acknowledge that our colleges, mainly, are to be held respon- 
sible for it. Their policy has been too much like that of the short- 
sighted and parsimonious farmer, who seeks to get all he can from his 
wasted acres without ever returning them a compensation. It must be 
acknowledged that the most judicious investment of funds for the cause 
of education in this State in modern times, has been made by the founder 
of the St. Johnsbury Academy. That outlay will do more good where 
it is than it would if given to one of our colleges. Should some friend 
of education propose to found in the Champlain valley an Academy by 
an equal outlay, I would not raise my hand to divert it into the treasury 
of our college. More than our colleges need funds, they need at appro- 
priate points in the State fitting-schools of a superior order. And they 
should cherish them with an exhaustive care, allowing no opi^ortunity 
to augment their funds, and to increase their efficiency, and their good 
name, to pass unimproved. 

I number, therefore, as prominent among the conditions of success to 
the Academy, the fidelity of the college to its interests. I have said 
that the principal of this Academy, in raising the standard of classical 
study, requires the presence of certain forces to aid him by holding its 
foot ; and, of these, the most potent is that of the college itself. If it 
proves unfaithful in service at this strategic point, and lets the foot slip, 
it must bear the odium of default as best it can, and not thrust it upon 
the standard-bearer. These, now, are some of the conditions of a suc- 
cessful Academy : it must have a fit location ; it must have its estab- 
lished courses of study ; it must be adequately endowed ; it must receive 
an appreciative support from the friends of education and the public ; but, 
preeminently, must it feel the fostering care and the elevating and 
steadying force of the college. 

These then. Gentlemen Alumni, are the replies which I have essayed 
to give in answer to questions propounded in the earlier part of my ad- 
dress. I have spoken as unto wise men: judge ye what I have said. 
We are here in a reunion to solemnize a Silver Wedding, and in the 



X, 



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interests of Barre Academy as tlie Bride. And this means, — translated 
into Anglo-Saxon prose, — to inaugurate a system of measures to be 
pushed until this institution is established upon enduring foundations. 
That we are justified in entering upon this enterprise, appears from the 
consideration that there is an urgent demand in our Vermont school 
system for several Academies, and for this among others ; and that all 
the conditions required in order to establish it, are not only obvious to 
the popular mind, but eminently practicable. We can have the Acad- 
emies which I have spoken of as demanded, and among them Barre 
Academy can have an honored rank and an enduring fame. 



V 



